Episode 48 – In the Belly of the Whale – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 48 Show Notes

Source: Inuit Mythology

This week on MYTH, it’s off to the Pacific Northwest for a tale from the First Peoples of the Americas. You’ll learn that Pinocchio was a bird before he was a puppet, that whales and ravens are cousins, and that you should be careful who you let into your mouth. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the deadly cannibal offspring of furry lovin’. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 48, “In the Belly of the Whale”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the staples of nearly every mythological pantheon is the trickster god or spirit. We’ve touched on a lot of their various forms and incarnations so far, but this week, we’ll be meeting a new trickster – the Raven of the Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest. This particular choice was influenced by a couple I spoke with briefly at DragonCon. So, nameless couple, here’s the tale you wanted.
The Raven is a trickster spirit in the tales of many of the indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest, Biritish Columbia, and Alaska. The stories are remarkably consistent from tribe to tribe, often even bearing the same names for the tales, and Raven in particular is always the same: a magical creature, a shapeshifter, a keeper of secrets, and a powerful desire for whatever catches Raven’s eye that often proves the creature’s undoing. Like many tricksters, Raven is a hero in some tales, the butt of the joke in others, and the villain in still others. This particular story comes from the Inuit tribes, also known as the Eskimo.
Raven was hungry. As usual. Raven was always hungry – he was famous for it, in fact. He checked around a little, and soon came across stories of a massive whale off the shore of a nearby island. The locals living in the village there were apparently so frightened of the massive beast that they refused to go fishing (which wasn’t something that could be kept up for long if they didn’t want to starve to death). Raven thought that sounded like just the ticket. He reckoned he was hungry enough to eat a whale.
Raven took wing and soared to the small island. He found a tree near the shore where he would be able to sit unnoticed and watch for this so-called giant whale. It didn’t take him long to spot the massive creature as it breached to breathe. Raven whistled softly. “Holy shit, that asshole is as big as they said! If I can figure out some way to kill him, I’ll have meat for weeks. Well, for days, anyway.” Unfortunately, with the whale being every bit as big as the stories said, there was no way that Raven could take it in a fair fight. On the other hand, Raven wasn’t exactly known for fighting fair.
For three days, Raven sat in that small tree and watched the whale. He ran through scheme after scheme, and trick after trick in his mind, but he found a flaw in each of them. At long last, after racking his brain, Raven’s beak opened in the closest thing he could come to a smile. He knew how to trick this asshole.
Raven sauntered down to the shore. The whale was currently floating not far off the coast, so Raven would be close enough to be heard. “Hey, Cousin Whale! Come a little closer to shore, would you? I’d like to talk to you, and I don’t fancy going hoarse from shouting!” Slowly, one massive eye opened and focused on the tiny bird. Whale wasn’t sure what such a creature could possibly have to say to him that he would give a shit about, but he was also pretty bored, so fuck it.
He swam slowly towards the shore, careful not to beach himself. “What did you want to say, little Raven?” “I wanted to tell you that we are cousins, Cousin Whale!” “Wait, you mean like actual blood relatives? I thought you were using ‘cousin’ as some sort of metaphorical respect. There’s no way we’re actually related, little Raven! You’re a tiny little bird, and I’m a huge fucking whale!” Raven laughed derisively, head cocked to the side in that mildly mocking way that birds have. “You’re wrong, Cousin. We are related. What’s more, I can prove it.”
That made the whale pause. “Huh. I’m still pretty sure you’re full of shit, but I’m bored and curious, so fuck it. Show me this proof of yours, little Raven.” “Simple, Cousin – just open your mouth! I’ll show you that our throats are the same shape, which proves that we’re cousins!”
The whale considered the strange little bird. “I’m not sure that’s true, and even if it is, I don’t think it proves that we’re related…” Raven was insistent, however, and the great whale soon found himself opening his mouth to Raven against his better judgment. What can I say? Raven’s a smooth talker.
As soon as the whale’s mouth was open wide enough, Raven dive-bombed him and soared straight down his throat. The story didn’t mention it before, but Raven was totally wearing a sweet bird-sized backpack, holding a bird-sized knife and some firewood. He followed the slimy tunnel down to the whale’s stomach, where he pulled a Pinnochio. He set up a small camp, built a fire, and cut a huge hunk of whale meat. Raven roasted the whale over his open fire inside said whale. He settled down comfortably into the whale’s stomach and began to munch. This was the life.
The whale pretty quickly realized he’d been tricked. He tried to cough him back up, but Raven was deep down and unwilling to move out. It was no use. He was stuck with a tricksy Raven living in his belly. “Okay, fine, I guess you can stay but can I ask you one favor?” Something indistinct came from deep inside him, which he took for Raven’s assent. “Just don’t eat my heart, okay? I can deal with the excruciating pain of being eaten from the inside as long as you stay away from my heart. Cool?”
He was pretty sure Raven agreed, not that there was much he could have done if Raven had said no. Days passed like this, with the whale being increasingly uncomfortable with their arrangement as Raven, who seemed to always be hungry, kept carving up the whale from the inside. Once most of the available meat was eaten, Raven moved on to the liver, then his kidneys, and so on through all of his organs, one by one. As promised, he left the whale’s heart alone, but he was quickly running out of the whale to eat, and he was, as ever, ravenous.
Whale was getting weaker, what with all of his muscles being eaten from the inside by the world’s nastiest parasite, so one day, he moved into shallower water to save his strength. “Hey, Raven – we’re heading to the shallows. I’m tired, dude.” Raven, realizing that this was the perfect opportunity, pulled his knife and sliced open the whale’s heart, killing the poor, battered creature instantly. At last, the long-suffering beast was put out of its misery. Raven was still not done, though.
The whale’s dead, emaciated body washed up on the nearby shore but, in a last fuck you from beyond the grave, it’s jaw was locked shut, trapping Raven inside. Raven shrugged. He supposed he’d just have to eat his way out. His beak tried to grin. This was going to be awesome.
For the next three days, Raven ate the whale’s lungs and ribs, reveling in the succulent meat. There was still a little good meat left, but this thing was mostly kicked by now. Fortunately, just about the time he ran out of things worth eating, he heard noises coming from outside of his corpsey prison. He was pretty sure that he was hearing humans. It so happened that it was a band of hunters, who had stumbled across the whale carcass. They’d figured that the whale, which looked fresh, would provide food for their tribe for quite some time, only they hadn’t figured on Raven and his insatiable hunger. They cut the carcass open, and were shocked to find nothing left but skin and bones. Raven took advantage of their surprise to launch himself out of this new hole in the whale and escape. It had been a few weeks, but he needed to go find something new to eat – he was hungry again.
This story is pretty typical of the Raven Tales, a broad range of stories told throughout the northwestern part of North America in many different tribes. They show a remarkable amount of consistency throughout the entire region, with Raven being a fairly typical trickster. He’s often used to either tell how worldly things first came to be or to be an example to children of what not to do to. Raven is selfish and glutinous, and he almost never does anything that he doesn’t think is going to be to his own benefit (unlike Coyote, the trickster of some of the Southwest tribes). Also unlike Coyote, he’s rarely depicted as being dumb: when he’s the butt of a trick, it’s almost always because his greed or gluttony get the better of him. There are some tales, especially among the Tsimshian and the Haida, which feature Raven as a hero.
It’s not terribly surprising that the raven became a trickster spirit to the First Peoples. They are incredibly clever birds and, as carrion eaters, were often feared as boundary creatures. Like the Coyote, the tendency of the raven to feast on the dead, even the human dead, led many cultures to think of them as a mediator between the worlds of life and death. They play a part in the mythologies of numerous cultures, usually as avatars of cunning (such as Huginn and Muninn in Norse mythology), as the omens of death (such as the Celts), or as the souls of the restless dead (such as the Germans).
With Raven winging off in search of its next meal, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the adlet.
The adlet are a race of monsters from Inuit mythology, mostly in Greenland, along the Labrador Peninsula, and on the Hudson Bay. They are a strange cross between a werewolf and a centaur, and bloodthirsty enough for either. Adlet have the lower body of a dog or wolf, and the upper torso of a human (or sometimes a furry humanoid torso and a human head). Most tribes that feature the adlet tell the same story about where they came from originally.
Once, long ago, a woman, known as Niviarsiang (which means “the girl”, so pretty generic) lived with her father Savirqong. She had reached the age where it was expected of her to leave her father’s house and marry, but she refused, earning the nickname Uinigumissuitung (or “she who wouldn’t take a husband”). Many men came to court her, for she was beautiful and her father was an influential man, but she rejected each and every one of them in turn.
Once there were no suitors left to seek her hand, she goes out walking one day and meets Ijirqang, a massive dog that is either blood-red or covered in red and white spots. She soon marries this monstrous dog and fucks him, getting good and pregnant almost immediately. Since he’s a dog, she gets pregnant with a full litter of inhuman children – five dogs and five dog-human hybrid adlet. Ijirqang is a lazy son of a bitch (literally, in this case), and he refuses to hunt to feed his family. The children are very hungry, and very noisy about it, so it soon falls to the monster children’s grandfather, Savirqong, to go out and hunt instead.
The village isn’t happy with this super-taboo family, and Savirqong is soon fed up with feeding a family that isn’t at all the one he wanted, so he tells his daughter that they’re going to have to move to a little island not far from the village. Ijirqang is super-lazy, and he refuses until Savirqong agrees to provide him with meat every day as long as the red dog agrees to swim across the strait to the village to pick it up. Niviarsiang sends her furry hubby off the next day with a pair of boots tied around his neck to carry the meat back across.
Savirqong is officially Over This Shit. Instead of filling the boots with sacks of the promised meat, he instead fills them with heavy stones. Ijirqang, too proud to admit how heavy his burden is, dives into the water and tries to swim across, but tires halfway there and drowns. Niviarsiang is grief-stricken over the loss of her beloved doggy husband and vows revenge against her father for his murder.
She sends her young adlet children across the water to attack her father by surprise. They swarm him, gnawing off his hands and feet before returning to their island. Now it’s Savirqong’s turn to vow revenge. He sends a message to his daughter, asking if he can pick her up in his boat and ferry her across for an apology meal. She agrees, satisfied with her vengeance, and too naive to think her father would ever attack her. When they reach the middle of the water, near where her husband had drowned, her father kicks her over the side of the boat. I’m not sure how he managed that without hands or feet, or how he was maneuvering the boat in the first place for that matter, but the story doesn’t explain so I guess just use your imagination.
She still has perfectly good hands, so she manages to swim to the side and cling to the gunwale. Savirqong somehow manages to wield a knife, slicing off his daughter’s fingers, which fall into the ocean and become whales and seals for…reasons. Maybe her husband’s doggy sperm was, like, super magic? I dunno.
Anyway, Niviarsiang manages to swim back to her little island safely, but she is now terrified that her father will boat across one day and murder the rest of her family. To keep them safe, she sends them away. The adlet, she sends inland, where they breed and give rise to a numerous, powerful people (adlet also happens to be the word that the Inuit used for any native people from other tribes). The dogs, she sends over the ocean, where they too bred and gave rise to a numerous, powerful people who one day returned from across the waves in huge ships – the Europeans.
This myth may have been a way of explaining why the Inuit could safely trade with the Europeans (descended from the relatively safe dogs) but not with the other native tribes (descended from the bloodthirsty adlet), and helped to allow the Inuit women to serve as mediators to obtain the European goods, often through prostitution or being straight-up raped.
The monstrous version of the adlet are dangerous, violent creatures, often said to be cannibals, delighting in the taste of human flesh. They’ll eat anything in a pinch, but they consider the fresh, warm blood of a slain Inuit the height of delicacy. They possess supernatural speed, strength, and agility, with all of the superior senses of their canine forebears. They are also incredibly hardy, nearly immune to most weapons and able to heal almost immediately from any wound not caused by fire or silver (much like their werewolf cousins).
Fire is their greatest weakness by far, and also their greatest fear. Carrying a torch out into the wilderness was the best way to stay safe, as an adlet would only attack someone carrying fire if on the point of starvation. Unsurprisingly, the adlet run and hunt in packs, moving swifter than any human hunter could ever hope to match. So if you find yourself alone in the northern wilderness of Canada or Alaska, and you hear howling on the wind, make sure you’re carrying silver and a great big flame, or you just may find yourself the next victim of the adlet pack.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll head into the dark forests of Serbia for our annual Halloween special. You’ll see why you should always bury the dead, why you should be careful how you use magic, and why you should never trust your coworkers. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll travel into the gathering shadows in search of the things that go bump in the night. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.